Ellen Cooney is the author of nine previous novels, including The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances (Mariner Books, 2015). Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Ontario Review, New England Review, and many other journals, and were listed several times in Best American Short Stories. She has received fellowships from the National Foundation for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, and has taught creative writing at Boston College, the Harvard Extension School, and most recently as Writer in Residence at MIT. A native of Massachusetts, she lives on the Phippsburg Peninsula in mid-coast Maine.